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video shoot Archives - Steve Stockman

Steve Stockman
Steve Stockman In Tips and Tricks, 12 Tips to Improve Your Video NOW

Use a Microphone: 12 Tips to Keep Your Video from Sucking (#11)

The microphones on most video cameras are programmed to adjust their own sound levels: they take whatever they hear and boost it to a constant, listenable level. Unfortunately, if they hear crowd noise around you, they boost that. Traffic noise, sirens—it all gets boosted.

In fact, if the camera mic hears nothing, it boosts that too. In an interview where the subject is too far from the mic, the camera will crank up every hint of sound between you and them, creating a big, echoey overlay of room noise.

If you’re as close to your subject as you should be … Read the rest

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Steve Stockman
Steve Stockman In 12 Tips to Improve Your Video NOW

Turn Off the Digital Effects In Your Video Camera. 12 Tips to Keep Your Video from Sucking! (#7)

There is no digital video effect that your camera can do that you should allow it to do.

Ever.

If you shoot nice clean video, you can always add a dorky effect like posterization later with one of many computer editing programs designed to do it. But if you shoot posterized video, you can never take it off. You’re stuck with it forever. Did I mention it was dorky?

Despite what the box at the store would have you believe, digital effects don’t give your camera special powers. Instead they take the high-quality picture your camera is capable of at … Read the rest

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Steve Stockman
Steve Stockman In Tips and Tricks, 12 Tips to Improve Your Video NOW

Stop Moving the Camera! 12 Tips to Keep Your Video from Sucking! (#5)

One of the fastest ways to make your video suck less:  Stop moving the camara.

Pros get to move the camera. You will too after you become a pro—or even after you’ve practiced enough to reach “skilled amateur” status. (Note, though, that some of the greatest shots in movie history don’t move the camera much at all!)

But if you’re not a pro, treat your video camera like a still camera. You don’t move with a still camera—you just point and fire.  Same deal here.  Point the lens, take your finger off the zoom button, look at the LCD screen … Read the rest

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Steve Stockman
Steve Stockman In Tips and Tricks, 12 Tips to Improve Your Video NOW

Zoom with Your Feet: 12 Tips to Keep Your Video from Sucking! (#4)

It’s an education to watch professional news videographers in action. They put their camera on their shoulders, march through the crowd right up to whomever they want to shoot (and by “right up” I mean 2 feet away) and go.

They don’t care whose view they block. They don’t care how the subject feels having a camera up their nose. They know that if they don’t get the shot, they don’t eat. Period.

Behavior like this at, say, the “I do” moment of your friend’s wedding would probably result in a flying tackle by the mother of the bride. But … Read the rest

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